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f3if3i: They do home at yellow. The longer the lock, the better the home.

You might implement a chance of AI craft also firing Torpedos at fighters, since the player does it from time to time.
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Azrapse: Thanks for a peer confirmation. I was starting to think that I was crazy because I was seeing that happening too, and nobody else seemed to notice it.

The AI always shoots torpedoes towards freighter-class ships or bigger, never smaller. And only once per attack run. They don't release two torpedoes or more while approaching. Instead they lock their targets at the maximum distance available, release one torpedo, then get closer to attack with their lasers.
When they are too close, they break off, get some good distance, and face their targets again, releasing another torpedo. Repeat.

Making the AI shoot torpedoes at fighters could seriously affect balance for most missions, as much as making the AI release more than one torpedo per attack run would.

I do agree we could add some extra intelligence to the AI in regards to using their warheads, but we must be careful to make sure it doesn't affect the original missions, only new modes like skirmishes, multiplayer, campaigns, etc.

I will use an example.
Imagine you need to protect a corvette from 3 incoming TIE Bombers on your X-wing, that appear at 10 km from it, and about the same distance from you.
When they approach the corvette and are at 6 km from it, they will release 3 torpedoes, 1 each.
With some luck, and master use of your ELS settings, you manage to close your distance to them on time to destroy one torpedo with your lasers and then engage the TIE Bombers, perhaps killing one or two in a tense dogfight, where only one of them sneaks past you and starts another attack run on the corvette, releasing another torpedo.
A corvette explodes with 6 torpedoes, so the player performance described above would be sufficient to make it survive, since the corvette took perhaps 4-5 torpedoes before all TIE Bombers were destroyed.
The player would end quite stressed up and tense, but also very much excited by the dangerous situation and feeling good with himself for having managed to protect the corvette.

Now, think what would happen if the TIE Bombers were actually smarter and all of them released 12 torpedoes as soon as they had a target lock on the corvette, as real players would do. There would be 36 torpedoes coming towards the corvette, and there wouldn't be anything the player could do about it. Not even sending 6 X-Wings would prevent that from happening. Not even by reducing the amount of bombers to half or to just one. Sure the player could blow up a couple torpedoes in the way there, but probably not enough to make a difference.

Many missions, both in X-Wing and in TIE Fighter, involve many flight groups of ships being sent to destroy one single capital ship or two, that you need to protect, by rushing here and there in the battlefield and taking care of the bombers before they deal too much damage. Those missions feel epic and challenging, but they really are balanced and not by chance, but because the AI is intentionally held back with artificial limitations such as those.

You end killing tens of ships and feeling like an ace in those missions, while the reality is that those ships are basically fighting with a hand tied behind their backs, so to speak.

That is why I think X-Wing and TIE Fighter could work in multiplayer as long as the multiplayer is coop only, and not versus. The experience is much different when you face perfectly balanced and choreographed AI rivals, than when you face cutthroat human players.
In my opinion, XvT experienced worse sales, and was mostly considered one of the worst in the whole series, because of that.
The engine was an improved version of that in TIE Fighter, the graphics were better, the sounds were better, the mission designers where the same people. Then what failed?
The game wasn't the same at all with human rivals.

I think a little bit of it would happen in this one, if the AI would be much more "logical".
Wow. Thanks for correcting my memory. Apparently it's been far too long since I played anything other than X-Wing Alliance. In XWA, AI warhead behavior was radically changed, but balanced against the fact that capital ships could (and usually did) shoot down enemy incoming warheads. You had to SERIOUSLY overwhelm the defensive fire in order to actually do anything against them with torpedoes.

So maybe it might be worth it to look into implementing both versions (eventually?) and giving players the choice. AI uses less torpedoes, but ships can't use countermeasures, or AI uses lots of torpedoes but ships can shoot them down. Might keep things relatively balanced, because the player still has the advantage of being able to dumbfire missiles to avoid the counter-battery fire.

Although maybe eventually we'd want to fix that too ;)
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countbuggula: So maybe it might be worth it to look into implementing both versions (eventually?) and giving players the choice. AI uses less torpedoes, but ships can't use countermeasures, or AI uses lots of torpedoes but ships can shoot them down. Might keep things relatively balanced, because the player still has the advantage of being able to dumbfire missiles to avoid the counter-battery fire.
Certainly, there was an arms race from TIE Fighter to XWA, in regards to the warhead gameplay. While in X-Wing and TIE Fighter they behave basically the same, in XvT they added so many more ways to be shot down by a missile that they had to add something to counter that. The countermeasures were added to balance that out, then also capital ships shooting down incoming torpedoes.

Ironically, you barely see that kind of action in the original movies, or not at all. They were basically WWII combats in space, and torpedoes and missiles appear as little else than dumbfire projectiles.

We get to see the first real homing missile action in Attack of the Clones, between Jango Fett and Obi Wan over Geonosis, and even there it seemed to be such a rare event, because Kenobi had to improvise with the ship's spare parts and use them as chaff. He didn't have any kind of countermeasure system equipped. So homing warheads cannot be that usual in the galaxy.
Apart from those confusing missiles-that-actually-are-pods-filled-with-Buzzer-droids from Revenge of the Sith, the other time we see missiles in action is during the attack on the Starkiller base, in The Force Awakens. The T-70 X-Wings there doesn't seem to have any kind of countermeasure system either, and they fall like flies. And that happens 30 years after Return of the Jedi (and X-Wing Alliance's timeframe).

My point is that X-Wing and TIE Fighter feel closer to the spirit of the movies by limiting the spamming of warheads (if we ignore the Missile Boat, that is the beginning of the missile spam, but at least it's restricted to the player ship doing it).

I think something was lost forever when fighters started blowing up each other several kilometers away, instead of dogfighting with their lasers.

Back to your suggestion, I think you make a valid point: either we leave the things as they were in the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, or we move into the XvT/XWA games handling of warheads. Maybe some toggleable option that lets you choose between WWII-style combat or Cold War-style combat.
Definitely, missions from X-Wing and TIE Fighter are balanced around the WWII style, while missions in XvT and XWA are balanced around the Cold War style, and this options should be locked in one or the other mode automatically. For other game modes, it could be left to the user's choice, or as part of a difficulty setting.

It doesn't make much impact in the programming, from my part. I am pretty sure capital ships could easily aim at and destroy all incoming warheads without sweating even at this point in the development if I go and add a couple lines of code here and there. It might be worth a try, just for the fun of it.
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Azrapse: Certainly, there was an arms race from TIE Fighter to XWA, in regards to the warhead gameplay. While in X-Wing and TIE Fighter they behave basically the same, in XvT they added so many more ways to be shot down by a missile that they had to add something to counter that. The countermeasures were added to balance that out, then also capital ships shooting down incoming torpedoes.

Ironically, you barely see that kind of action in the original movies, or not at all. They were basically WWII combats in space, and torpedoes and missiles appear as little else than dumbfire projectiles.

We get to see the first real homing missile action in Attack of the Clones, between Jango Fett and Obi Wan over Geonosis, and even there it seemed to be such a rare event, because Kenobi had to improvise with the ship's spare parts and use them as chaff. He didn't have any kind of countermeasure system equipped. So homing warheads cannot be that usual in the galaxy.
Apart from those confusing missiles-that-actually-are-pods-filled-with-Buzzer-droids from Revenge of the Sith, the other time we see missiles in action is during the attack on the Starkiller base, in The Force Awakens. The T-70 X-Wings there doesn't seem to have any kind of countermeasure system either, and they fall like flies. And that happens 30 years after Return of the Jedi (and X-Wing Alliance's timeframe).

My point is that X-Wing and TIE Fighter feel closer to the spirit of the movies by limiting the spamming of warheads (if we ignore the Missile Boat, that is the beginning of the missile spam, but at least it's restricted to the player ship doing it).

I think something was lost forever when fighters started blowing up each other several kilometers away, instead of dogfighting with their lasers.

Back to your suggestion, I think you make a valid point: either we leave the things as they were in the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, or we move into the XvT/XWA games handling of warheads. Maybe some toggleable option that lets you choose between WWII-style combat or Cold War-style combat.
Definitely, missions from X-Wing and TIE Fighter are balanced around the WWII style, while missions in XvT and XWA are balanced around the Cold War style, and this options should be locked in one or the other mode automatically. For other game modes, it could be left to the user's choice, or as part of a difficulty setting.

It doesn't make much impact in the programming, from my part. I am pretty sure capital ships could easily aim at and destroy all incoming warheads without sweating even at this point in the development if I go and add a couple lines of code here and there. It might be worth a try, just for the fun of it.
That's great analysis, Azrapse. I agree with you as far as the spamming of missiles during dogfights go. You don't really see it in the movies and it fits the WWII style combat much better. That said, maybe having improved use of warheads vs larger ships wouldn't be a terrible thing. It might take some testing, but I'll bet it'd be possible to tweak the larger amount of torpedoes fired vs the accuracy of anti-torpedo fire to keep the balance even in legacy campaign missions. If that could be done, it'd be the ideal toggle between classic and improved behavior.

And if people really want missile spam in dogfights, I think that should be a separate option.
In order to counter missile spamming, you could make the homing of all missiles less effective, making lasers a more viable option.
The addition of advanced missiles and torpedoes in TIE Fighter made those warheads unevade-able in normal craft, I would welcome nerfing those.

In the X-Wing novels X-Wings definitely fired torpedoes at other fighters, but those novels were inspired by the X-Wing series anyway.

For me it's the question: Why wouldn't any pilot fire a warhead at an enemy (even with torpedoes) when he's got some.

Any AI should be able of doing what a human could do, including making the same errors as a human.

The X-Wing series were always more-simlike than arcade. I would be for AI firing torpedoes at fighters.
Even when we are a bit silent here, we are working non-stop on the game.
I am looking forward to uploading some new video to YouTube so that we can show the improvements since the previous one.
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Azrapse: Even when we are a bit silent here, we are working non-stop on the game.
I am looking forward to uploading some new video to YouTube so that we can show the improvements since the previous one.
May I ask that is the iMuse system working well at this stage ? Thank you.
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Azrapse: Even when we are a bit silent here, we are working non-stop on the game.
I am looking forward to uploading some new video to YouTube so that we can show the improvements since the previous one.
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StyleWan: May I ask that is the iMuse system working well at this stage ? Thank you.
Well, in fact, the iMuse system was the first thing done thanks to Tarvis and Laserschwert.
You can play with one of the earliest web builds here (Open in a browser other than Chrome, and accept the Unity Plugin if needed). If you open the iMuse panel to the left, you can press the different theme buttons and event buttons to have the music seamlessly respond to that.

You can see it in action in the previous video we realeased in July. (Now the game looks much better than that)
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StyleWan: May I ask that is the iMuse system working well at this stage ? Thank you.
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Azrapse: Well, in fact, the iMuse system was the first thing done thanks to Tarvis and Laserschwert.
You can play with one of the earliest web builds here (Open in a browser other than Chrome, and accept the Unity Plugin if needed). If you open the iMuse panel to the left, you can press the different theme buttons and event buttons to have the music seamlessly respond to that.

You can see it in action in the previous video we realeased in July. (Now the game looks much better than that)
Great ! iMuse is the soul of X-Wing and TIE Fighter !
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Azrapse: Well, in fact, the iMuse system was the first thing done thanks to Tarvis and Laserschwert.
You can play with one of the earliest web builds here (Open in a browser other than Chrome, and accept the Unity Plugin if needed). If you open the iMuse panel to the left, you can press the different theme buttons and event buttons to have the music seamlessly respond to that.

You can see it in action in the previous video we realeased in July. (Now the game looks much better than that)
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StyleWan: Great ! iMuse is the soul of X-Wing and TIE Fighter !
Exactly!
It's in fact the main reason we I started this project too :D
We aren't dead.
I cannot wait until you see the nice progress we have made on the game.

- MajorParts has done an awesome work with all kind of visual eyecandy. I don't know if he wanted to keep this all secret until some release, but I just need to tell.
We have now big turrets on the frigate, like those in the XWAUP project, but also smaller turrets totally modeled by MajorParts as a modern rendition to the smaller pyramidal gun turrets that appeared in the X-Wing series from TIE Fighter and on. They are definitely not just little pyramids anymore. :)
Lens flares! Get ready to be blinded by the local sun, other ships engine glows, and perhaps even laser muzzleflashes. J. J. Abrams would be proud. [url=http://azrapse.es/xwvm/glow2.png]Screenshot Screenshot
The new proton torpedoes are also looking awesome with their new trail designed by MajorParts, who also has configured lots of sounds for engines, projectiles, explosions, etc.

- Dart Flodis, the developer of the this space battle game that reminds to Battlefront II space battles, has kindly contributed with code for the rotating and aiming turrets. Thanks a lot.

- FekLeyrTarg has provided nice new mouse cursors to replace the boring default Windows one with others based on the original games. The proton torpedoes are also using his model based on the ordnance selection screen in TIE Fighter.

- I have been fixing bugs and working on a functional hyperspace sequence. That has led my to rework how the starry skybox works.

Before, the background was just a box (called skybox) with textured sides. If you wanted a different background, you needed to change these textures. Not only these textures were immutable inside the game and difficult to create (to correct the deformation that the box corners apply on the background), but also they were huge and took a lot of video memory. A lot of it. And only to show little white dots on a black background.
For a time I have wanted to add those random nebulas, dust clouds and far galaxies that appeared in the originals to the background here, and that skybox was preventing it.
But the final nail was when trying to make a "jump to hyperspace" sequence.
In the movies, these sequences consist on every star on the background being stretched towards the camera, away from a central vanishing point.
For once, the games did exactly the same thing. Every star in the original games isn't just a dot in a bitmap, but an actually object that the game tracks and can deform for this effect.
So I have replaced the skybox with a particle system that generates about 10 thousand stars around the play area. Screenshot. This uses much much much less memory than the skybox (if I am not mistaken, about 3 orders of magnitude less), but also allows us to do cool stuff like adding additional particles with the shapes of nebulas, dust clouds, asteroid fields, galaxies...
And above all of that, it let us play with those stars by stretching them for a nice hyperspace effect! Screenshot
Really really really great work !!!

May I ask that do you have a lower limit of the frame rate in mind ?

I really hope that I can play the game with a frame rate not lower than 60 fps all the time, with a moderate system.
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StyleWan: Really really really great work !!!

May I ask that do you have a lower limit of the frame rate in mind ?

I really hope that I can play the game with a frame rate not lower than 60 fps all the time, with a moderate system.
That's hard to say. The PC environment isn't like a console, where the hardware is fix, and then you can be sure what framerate your game will run at.
My computer is from 2009 and it runs the game currently at about 70 FPS (and I have not spend time optimizing it).
You can always lower the quality settings if framerate is of more importance to you than eyecandy, of course.
I think mine is even older...the gfx card is a pile of crap...I average 72fps.

Keep in mind as well, these fps we are reporting, are from running the game in the editor. It will run much better from a build.
That looks fantastic. Any chance some of the graphics like lens flares will be optional, for those trying to recreate a look more like the OT?
Great progress!

Having the individually generated stars / particles definitely seems the best way to go - part of the trouble with textures is that they scale poorly to higher resolutions - e.g. playing XvT or XWA at a higher resolution and a bigger screen shows off how (necessarily, given their time) low resolution the backdrop pictures really are.